Suit seeks to protect humpbacks
American Indian and conservation groups have filed a lawsuit accusing the Trump administration of failing to protect humpback whale habitat in the Pacific Ocean, where the famously playful animals are in peril from ship strikes, oil spills and other environmental problems.
The Center for Biological Diversity, Turtle Island Restoration Network and the Wishtoyo Chumash Foundation said the National Marine Fisheries Service failed to designate critical habitat for a number of humpback whale populations after their designation under the Endangered Species Act was reaffirmed in 2016.
The suit, filed Thursday in federal court in San Francisco, said the administration was required to designate habitat and take measures to protect it within one year of listing the species. Instead, the Trump administration said it is considering expanding offshore oil and gas drilling up and down the East and West coasts, including California, where humpbacks migrate every year.
“As cargo ships and crabbing gear slaughter West Coast humpbacks, the Trump administra-
tion won’t lift a finger to save these magnificent whales,” said Catherine Kilduff, an attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity. “The federal government needs to protect critical humpback habitat that’s prone to oil spills and dangerously dense with fishing gear and ship traffic. These whales need urgent action, not more delays.”
Jim Milbury, the spokesman for the fisheries service, which is part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said he cannot comment on pending litigation.
In 2016, the NOAA’s fisheries service delisted nine of the 14 subspecies of humpbacks that were put under the Endangered Species Act in 1973. The move was touted as an ecological success story for the blubbery giants, famous for putting on spectacular displays of leaping and splashing.
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit pointed out, though, that the humpback subspecies seen along the California coast didn’t fare nearly as well as their cohorts in the rest of the world.
The Central American population, which migrates twice annually along the California coast past San Francisco, remained on the endangered list after only 411 animals were counted. The Mexico population, which feeds off the West Coast and Alaska, was downgraded from endangered to threatened, even though experts determined that many of the 3,200 whales were dying from entanglements in commercial fishing gear.
Humpbacks often get tangled in fishing gear around Monterey Bay, where the migrating whales come to feed. Vessel collisions have also become a major cause of death outside the Golden Gate, where 7,300 large vessels pass every year. An estimated 22 humpbacks are killed by ships off the coasts of California, Oregon and Washington each year, according to a recent study.
Disasters such as the 2015 Refugio oil spill, which dumped 142,800 gallons of crude in the coastal waters of Santa Barbara, are also a problem for humpbacks, which were actually observed swimming through the sheen that the pipeline rupture left in the water.
“Since time immemorial, Chumash people have shared our home waters of the Santa Barbara Channel with humpback whales,” said Alicia Cordero, the First Nations program officer for the Wishtoyo Chumash Foundation. “They have a deeply respected role in our culture (and) the Chumash people play a strong role in protecting our magnificent relatives as they face increasing threats from ship strikes, entanglement and gas and oil development.”
The worldwide humpback population was nearly wiped out by commercial hunting in the 19th and 20th centuries. Before 1900, an estimated 15,000 humpbacks lived in the North Pacific. In the 20th century, their numbers dwindled to fewer than 1,000.
The International Whaling Commission’s whaling ban, imposed in 1982, played a major role in the comeback. Between 75,000 and 80,000 humpbacks now live in the world’s oceans, and many of those survivors migrate through the Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary.
Over the past few springs, large numbers of humpbacks were spotted feeding off San Francisco, far more than are normally seen at that time of year. They have even been seen cavorting near Fort Point in San Francisco Bay and under the Golden Gate Bridge.
Researchers suspect the giant cetaceans have been feasting on the tiny shrimplike creatures known as krill and unusual concentrations of anchovies near shore, but those populations have been fluctuating wildly in recent years.
Humpbacks have had a special place in Bay Area hearts since Humphrey, a 40-ton humpback, caused pandemonium in 1985 when he swam through the Carquinez Strait, up the Sacramento River and into a creek near Rio Vista. The Solano County city became the focal point of a whale craze, attracting 10,000 people a day as experts tried desperately to turn around the lost animal.
Humphrey went back to sea after 25 days, but returned five years later when he got stuck on a mud flat near Candlestick Point. He was last seen in 1991 near the Farallon Islands.